The invention relates to an apparatus for the laminating and cutting of photoresist webs, which are fed by transport rollers to two sides of a base, which runs through the nip of two laminating rolls, with movable vacuum bars for drawing and firmly holding the photoresist webs, and with cutting devices for making a parallel cut of the photoresist webs during the laminating operation.
Apparatus for laminating and cutting photoresist webs is known from EP-A2-0 213 555 and makes possible the cutting of photoresist webs into photoresist sheets of defined size as well as the fold-free laminating of the photoresist sheets on flexible and rigid base materials, for example blank circuit boards. This known apparatus for cutting and laminating is integrated into a movable assembly of a laminator, so that cutting and laminating can be performed without interruption of the laminating operation. In the case of this apparatus, the photoresist webs are drawn by means of negative pressure over their entire width against the front edge of vacuum bars, these vacuum bars being able to traverse back and forth obliquely to the running direction of the base material. The vacuum bars with the photoresist webs adhering to the front edge of these are advanced in the direction of the laminating rolls to such an extent that the photoresist webs together with the base material are taken up by the driven laminating rolls, with simultaneous advancement of the photoresist webs by the transport rolls, and the laminating begins. When the photoresist webs are taken up by the laminating rolls, the vacuum bars are returned to their initial position. At the same time, two cutting knives carry out a parallel cut on both photoresist webs, without stopping of the laminating operation being necessary during the cutting operation.
EP-A1 No. 40 842, No. 40 843 and No. 41 642 disclose laminating processes in which a substrate or a layer base is laminated on both sides with a dry resist, under pressure. The dry resist is drawn from a supply roll for the respective side of this layer base, for example, a circuit board, which is to be laminated and the two dry resist films with the layer base sandwiched between them are fed to the nip of a pair of laminating .rolls. Subsequently, the coated layer bases are individualized by means of a cutting apparatus, i.e. the photoresist webs applied to both sides of the layer bases are cut through.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,214,936 relates to a laminating apparatus in which continuously progressing boards are contact-heated and are laminated on both sides. As soon as a sensor detects the rear edge of the preheated board before its entry into the laminating roll nip, the laminating rolls are stopped after a certain delay time, which makes it possible for the rear edge of the board to pass the laminating nip. When the front edge of the next board is detected, the laminating rolls begin to run once again and the board entering the nip is laminated. The photoresist webs applied to both sides of the board are fed to the laminator as an endless web, and the laminating produces a continuous strip of two photoresist layers, between which the boards are in each case enclosed at an equal spacing. The bonding length of the resist layers between two boards may be, for example, up to 18 mm. The separation of boards from one another is performed in two cutting operations along the rear edge of the front board and along the front edge of the following board. Frequently, even three cutting operations are necessary since, in the first cut, initially only the connecting piece of the photoresist webs between two boards is cut through and subsequently the dry resist layers protruding beyond the front and rear edges are cut off only during finishing.
German Offenlegungsschrift No. 3,538,117 discloses a separating apparatus for boards, with which the continuous photoresist strip, which is laminated onto spaced-apart boards, is cut along the width thereof. In a holding device of the separating apparatus, a cross-cutting device is fixed, which comprises two knife holders with mutually parallel knives, which can be moved apart and together and which, during the crossing movement, cut through the photoresist strip along the rear edge and the front edge of two successive boards in a parallel double cut. This separating apparatus is an independent unit which is arranged downstream of the laminating apparatus.